ARTICLES

Meetings have been the subject of endless critique — too many, too long, too unfocused. But the more interesting question about meeting culture is not how to have fewer of them. It is what they reveal about how a business actually operates.

A meeting where the same two or three people do all the talking is telling you something about whose voices are considered valuable.

A meeting where decisions are announced rather than made is telling you something about how much input people are actually invited to provide.

A meeting that could have been an email, run by a leader who needs an audience, is telling you something about where accountability for people’s time sits.

Meeting culture is a mirror. It reflects the power dynamics, the communication norms and the psychological safety of the organisation with unusual clarity — precisely because it is the context in which all of those things are on display simultaneously.

The businesses with the most effective meeting cultures are not the ones that have banned meetings or mandated standing-only formats. They are the ones where the purpose of each meeting is clear, the right people are in the room, and every person in that room has been given, through repeated behavioural evidence, genuine reason to believe their contribution is welcome.

That last condition is the hardest to create. It is also the most important. Because a room full of people who do not feel safe to contribute is not a meeting. It is a performance. And the cost of that performance, multiplied across every week of the working year, is significant.

 

If you want practical support reviewing your workplace policies, contracts, leadership capability, or workplace culture, Blue Kite HR Consulting can help you take a proactive approach before issues become bigger problems.